15 Minute Sea Creature Cookies

For when you want to bake special cookies and take and/or serve, but just don't have the time. Clean up is minimal as you slice the cookies on parchment paper right on the baking sheet and mix the food coloring right in the can of frosting. Items used:

• Refrigerated sugar cookie dough
• 1 can vanilla frosting
• Gummy sea creatures
• Blue Food coloring
• Baking Parchment paper
• Knife

I used a bag of octopus and there were 10 of them and ended up with 13 cookies, but you could use any type of gummy sea creatures. Our local Walmart has sharks and even some "Finding Nemo" ones.

Preheat oven to temperature indicated on package, place baking parchment paper, slice into 1 inch slices and place approximately 2 inches apart then place in oven to bake according to package.

While cookies are baking, open up can of frosting and add approximately 15 drops of blue food coloring and mix in the can using knife.

Remove the cookies from the oven and allow to cool, or you can speed up the process by sticking them in the fridge for a few minutes if you have shelf space.

I know, cookies are not suppossed to be square - the reason these turned out this was as that I left the dough out of fridge too long before slicing them - wait until you are ready to start the project before taking out of the fridge to avoid this.

Once cookies are cool, frost them with the blue frosting.

Put your sea creature(s) on the top and you are done!

SEA MONSTER GLOVE PUPPET

This craft was created for Sherry at About.com Family Crafts challenge on what to make with a lonely glove that had lost its mate and I am proud that it has been featured on her site: http://familycrafts.about.com/od/glovecrafts/a/seaglovepuppet.htm

When my son was little he had a whole collection of "glove puppets" that he enjoyed playing with (although is favorite was mosquito that he nicknamed "Nipper"). I was pressed for time, so I made this simple project to demonstrate what you can make with a lonely glove.

Items used:

• 1 glove
• Scraps of fabric or felt
• Scissors
• Needle and thread
• Sewing machine (optional)
• Fiberfill (optional, can use scraps of fabric)
• Piece of scrap cardboard
• Fabric paints
• Lid off a margarine tub

To make the head, I used the lid of a small tub or margarine to cut out a circle.

I then ran a basting stitch all the way around the edge, then gathered it up slightly and stuffed it with fabric scraps and finished gathering it up until there was only about 1/2 inch gap. (I did mine on the sewing machine, but you could hand baste instead). To prep the glove prior to hand-stictching the head on, a piece of cardboard was inserted so as not to stitch through to the bottom layer by accident. Position the head just above where the fingers meet the body of the glove on the top and hand-stitch the head down.

He was then painted with lavender fabric paint dots (one side at a time then allowed to dry) and then the circles were outlined with blue glitter fabric paint, then a face was drawn on with black, white and red fabric paint (but you could use any colors you wanted).